Emily Bronte’s 1847 tale is said to contain “misogynistic, homophobic and racist attitudes”, according to dons.
It comes after the story was reimagined into a raunchy film released last month starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.
The woke warning has been slapped on an English literature Victorian fiction module at Cardiff University, with other greats including Bram Stoker’s Dracula on the reading list.
A handbook has staff warning scholars they may encounter Victorian-era attitudes.
Yorkshire Moors-set romance Wuthering Heights is among the books which may upset snowflakes.
The advisory warns of scenes of “physical and sexual violence, which some students may find distressing” and tells them to seek advice if concerned. (Thomas Godfrey)
If you need trigger wanings, perhaps don't do a course on Victorian literature, as the trigger warnings are going to be even longer than the books themselves.
On a cold winter’s morning, sufficiently hat-and-scarfed up, I took a train to Keighley before jumping on a BrontëBus for the short trip through the snow-covered fields of Worth Valley to Haworth - the home of the Brontë family, and the jewel in Yorkshire’s literary crown.
By mid-morning the town’s famed steep, cobbled street was beginning to stir. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi featured in some form in the various boutique, antique, and book shop windows that adorn both sides.
At the top of the hill stands the church, rebuilt since the days when Patrick, the Brontës’ father, presided over the parish. A few steps further, past the most gothic-looking graveyard you’ve ever seen, and you arrive at the Brontë Parsonage Museum - the first stop of my visit.
Visitors to the Parsonage can explore the rooms in which the sisters lived, wrote, and died. These rooms have been transformed into a rich repository, offering the opportunity to learn the family’s history, and peruse various manuscripts and personal effects once owned by the sisters.
Upon arrival there was only one topic on the lips of my fellow visitors, which made me consider the film’s potential impact on local tourism.
Sue Newby, Learning Officer at the Parsonage, explained: “We always notice an upturn in visitors when there is a new adaptation on film or TV. The Brontë sisters’ own story is fascinating and there is a real appeal for people in seeing where the sisters grew up and produced their work.
“We are expecting a sizeable and sustained increase in visitors to the Parsonage and the surrounding area.”
Sue also identified a particularly popular Brontë-inspired location nearby: “There is a ruin of a farm known as Top Withens, approximately three and a half miles from Haworth, which anecdotally, is said to have been the inspiration of the house of Wuthering Heights.
“The site itself is a beautiful spot, and is very evocative of the story.”
Exploring Brontë country was certainly on the day's agenda, but not before a brew. Walking back into town I stumbled upon the Haworth Old Post Office. You won’t be able to post your Brontë-themed postcards here, but they do offer a full menu including award-winning brunch, a licensed bar, and great coffee.
The site was a post office when the Brontë sisters were working on their novels, and offers a small glimpse into their world. It is said to have been the location from which the sisters posted their manuscripts to prospective publishers, and Brontë brother, Branwell, even used to crash there after a heavy night of drinking at the nearby Black Bull. [...]
I dipped below and resurfaced above a snowy undulation, and all at once the summit closed in on me.
From a frozen bench I gazed out over the snow-topped trees and white-capped fields - that desolate white expanse in all its haunting grandeur. It is this duality that shapes Wuthering Heights, as Sue Newby said: “The surrounding moorland landscape plays a part in all the Brontë novels, but in Wuthering Heights the whole of the story takes place there.
“Though there aren’t lengthy descriptions of the landscape in the novel, the mixture of its beauty and bleakness is at the very heart of the story.
“It’s very clear that the three sisters had a close sense of connection with the surrounding countryside but Emily especially loved it and knew it intimately.”
Re-reading passages of the novel in the days following my trek - having traced the steps of the Brontës, felt the ooze of the moorland mud beneath my boots and experienced the icy blast of the Yorkshire wind whipping up from the gorse - I understood this entirely. The moors cast new light on the stark, elemental forces that shape Brontë’s characters. It is a must-do pilgrimage for any Brontë enthusiast.
Hike completed and safely back in Haworth, there was only one place I was going for a pre-cinema tipple. The Black Bull makes the corner where the cobbled Main Street branches up towards the church and the Parsonage. Often frequented by Branwell, if his night didn’t end hiding in the post office he was known to escape out of the kitchen window when someone came to fetch him for overindulging. [...]
Some of the landscape shots were incredible, filmed 25 miles from Haworth in Swaledale, but with the exhilaration of the hike and its connection to the story still firmly in my mind, I couldn’t help but ask: what has this film added that the moors have not already said?
Between the Parsonage, the cobbles of Haworth, and the icy summit at Top Withins, I had experienced Wuthering Heights in its true setting. The film had offered colour and spectacle, but the windswept moors gave something deeper: the story’s wild heartbeat - alive in snow and solitude.
In the end, the landscape writes Wuthering Heights more faithfully than any adaptation ever could. (Sam Shakerley Reed)
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